Who's Hurting More?
The question of who was in more pain—Jageun Hoesaegi or Mungchi—had erupted, almost overnight, into the hottest debate inside Mongmong Animal Hospital.
"Mungchi's gotta be hurting pretty bad."
"Wouldn' Li'l Grey be hurtin' more, though?"
"I think Mungchi's the one in more pain..."
"I daresay the little grey brother is suffering more."
A full-blown war of words broke out as everyone argued their case, each more certain than the last. Most of the others were content to simply voice an opinion and leave it there. Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi, however, were a different story.
"Jageun Hoesaegi's going to hurt more, meow!"
"No. Mungchi's hurting more."
Having stood up in front of so many friends to speak for Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi, the two of them had now plunged straight into a battle of pride.
"Mungchi got put back together with a Pong-pong Pin, so he won't even feel it, meow!"
"Jageun Hoesaegi's all wrapped up in bandages, so he won't feel a thing."
"That's not true, meow!"
"Yes it is!"
A sharp crackle—Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi's eyes met in midair, and sparks flew.
In that instant, Hoesaegi's long silver fur shivered with a rippling shudder.
Had Gkamnyangi's gaze frightened him?
No.
The great leader. The valiant commander. The legendary being who had become myth itself among the cats of Eunpyeong-gu. The unmatched powerhouse who had led his pack with a strength no one dared challenge—the aura of Silver Rain had opened its eyes.
The aura of the one at the top, the charisma of it, raced through his veins and woke every muscle in his body. Taut with a thrilling excitement, Hoesaegi's golden eyes flashed.
If a challenge had been thrown down, it had to be met.
Reading the dare in Gkamnyangi's gaze, Hoesaegi curled the corner of his mouth. A slow, easy grin. He flashed the cat in front of him a leisurely, confident smile, then turned his face toward the recovery kennel where Jageun Hoesaegi lay.
"Little Grey, meow."
"Huh?"
"Tell me how much it hurts, meow!"
"Huh?"
"Show me. Express how much it hurts, meow!"
Those golden eyes poured out a raw charisma honed on the brutal streets, unfiltered and unsoftened. The moment Jageun Hoesaegi met them, a groan of suffering leapt from his mouth all by itself.
"A-aigoo...! Aigoo, it hurts..."
In truth the painkillers had soaked through his whole body by now, and it didn't hurt that much anymore. Under Hoesaegi's grilling, though, Jageun Hoesaegi produced a clumsy, theatrical wail.
Watching him, Gkamnyangi let out a snicker.
Shadow, the great leader of Bluebird Park, had always had one being he was determined to surpass.
Silver Rain. The idol of the cat world.
He had wanted to beat that one. He had wanted to rise above that one. He had wanted to stand, unchallenged, in the place of the one at the top. Shadow, the Second-in-Command, had lived every waking moment—and every sleeping one—conscious of that fact.
He had never managed it. He had challenged and challenged again, and in the end... all that had remained for Shadow was a lonely defeat.
And yet.
Finally. An opportunity.
Shadow—Gkamnyangi—curled the smirking corner of his mouth even higher, and his round eyes bent into a pair of crescents. A look of utter composure. The summit he had longed for was right there in front of him.
Gkamnyangi rose onto his hind legs and planted his front paws on his hips.
"He doesn't look like he's in any pain at all."
"That's not true, meow!"
"What's not true about it?"
Gkamnyangi snorted a puff of air and went on.
"This is what real pain looks like. Watch closely!"
He turned to Mungchi, his voice packed solid with confidence.
"Mungchi."
Mungchi, who had been reading the room ever since Jageun Hoesaegi started screaming, answered in a voice that crawled along the floor, as if he had known this was coming.
"Y-yes..."
"Tell me how much it hurts."
"Eu... euaaaaaah...!"
"I know you're hurting more than that. Scream as loud as the pain is!"
Oh, come on! It doesn't even hurt that much!
Mungchi wanted to bellow that at the top of his lungs. He couldn't. He obeyed Gkamnyangi's command.
"Euaah, euaaaaaah... kkeok!"
A scream like a monster's roar thundered through the inpatient ward.
Hoesaegi was not about to sit there and listen.
"Little Grey, meow! Imagine your bandage peeling off, meow!"
"Euhk!"
Jageun Hoesaegi shrieked. Apparently satisfied, Hoesaegi curled his mouth and added,
"Kkotnimi just bumped your leg as he walked by, meow!"
"Kkueeeeok, euaaaaaah...!"
A roar burst from Jageun Hoesaegi's mouth—so loud it swallowed the howl Mungchi had been pouring out.
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi's flashing eyes locked on each other. Hoesaegi's pupils were full of Gkamnyangi; Gkamnyangi's were full of Hoesaegi.
Well? Little Grey's voice is louder, meow!
Hmph. Louder or not, Mungchi's still hurting more.
In that moment of showing off their power through nothing but a look, the faces reflected in each other's eyes were no longer those of the Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi who got along so well.
One was Silver Rain, who had become the idol and the legend of cats everywhere. The other was the Second-in-Command who followed in his wake, the icon of a challenge that refused to bow to defeat: Shadow.
Standing in each other's eyes were the powerhouses of Eunpyeong-gu.
Kyaaaa-rrrrngh!
Grrrrrrngh!
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi glared at each other as if they meant to devour one another on the spot. The fact that they had come to visit Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi no longer mattered in the slightest. What mattered was overpowering the other. Victory, and nothing else.
In the inpatient ward, taut with tension, the only sound was the fwip, fwip of dogs' heads snapping back and forth as they watched, barely daring to breathe.
Caught in the middle of the fight, Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi had no idea what to do. At first they had been grateful that someone had taken their side. But as time went on, the war of words between the two cats grew fiercer and fiercer. And in the end...
Both cats whipped their heads around toward their respective champions at the same instant.
Then—pad, pad, pad. Hoesaegi, who had been standing in the center of the ward holding forth, walked toward Jageun Hoesaegi's kennel.
A hundred battles, a hundred victories. Unbeaten, unbowed. Hoesaegi had never lost a fight in his life, and as he walked toward the kennel he vowed that this time would be no different.
I need one powerful blow, meow.
He laid out his strategy on the way, then pressed his face flat against the kennel's glass and spoke in a low voice.
"Little Grey, meow. Talk like you're about to collapse from the pain, meow!"
"Kraaaaaah..."
Jageun Hoesaegi, who had paused, started screaming again—loud enough to make the whole ward vibrate.
"That's not it, meow."
"Huh?"
"Small and thin. Right on the edge of collapsing, meow. Ah—you remember how Kkotnimi was groaning in pain, meow?"
At the order to moan, Jageun Hoesaegi swallowed a sigh.
Ugh. I just want this to be over.
At first it had given him a lift, knowing someone understood he was hurting. Now he only felt ridiculous, with no idea why he was still doing this. An order, though, was an order. Jageun Hoesaegi called up the memory of Kkotnimi's groans and began to act.
"Aeuu... eueu... euaah."
He squinted, planted his head against the wall, and moaned in a voice so small it was barely there.
"Good, meow. This time, relax your mouth, meow. Stick your tongue out just a little, meow. Relax your eyes, too, meow. And while you're relaxing them, scrunch your face a bit, meow."
High-difficulty acting. But Jageun Hoesaegi, something of a master when it came to playing up his pain, did exactly as he was told.
"Perfect, meow. Now mix in those sounds like your breath is just about to give out—hup... uk... kkeoeok—in between, meow."
Hoesaegi's demands grew finer and finer. Jageun Hoesaegi drew a deep breath in and began.
"...Aeuu... hup, eueueu... keo, keoeok!"
"Well done, meow. A little quieter and you'd be exactly like Kkotnimi, meow."
Mixing praise and encouragement in just the right amounts, Hoesaegi went on transforming Jageun Hoesaegi into the most pitiful puppy of the century.
Gkamnyangi was not sitting still either.
"Mungchi. You moan too. That looks more painful."
"...Aigoo, aya! Ayayaya."
Mungchi reproduced, note for note, the exact sounds of suffering he had been making until the day before. But acting could be more vivid than reality itself, and to Gkamnyangi's eye it was still badly lacking.
"If you mix in a few keok, keuk sounds like Little Grey, it'll feel a lot more real."
"Aigoo-ya... keok... geureuk... aheu!"
"Oh! Well done. This time, just a little quieter. And half-close your eyes, tilt your head just like this—then you'll look like you're in much more pain."
Looking thoroughly pleased, Gkamnyangi issued further instructions.
"Aheuheuya... keok, aheuk, aheuheu... geureuk."
As time passed, Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi's obsession with winning only grew, and so the standard of acting they demanded climbed higher and higher. The more the two cats piled it on, the more Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi felt like they were dying.
Oh, come on! I don't even hurt at all anymore.
The painkillers were doing their job beautifully, and with his mind thoroughly occupied elsewhere, Jageun Hoesaegi couldn't actually feel any pain at all. Mungchi was in the same boat.
Haaah, I'm exhausted. How much longer do I have to do this?
Having hurt less than Jageun Hoesaegi to begin with, Mungchi was worn out from pretending. Both of them wanted nothing more than to stop. In front of two cats overflowing with charisma, though, their mouths simply would not open. The sighs Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi let out in secret only grew louder.
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi's battle of pride rolled on after that. And as the hours passed, Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi's acting improved by the day.
Jageun Hoesaegi was lying in his kennel without making a sound. And yet the eyelids trembling like leaves, and the wet, shining eyes behind them, were enough to make anyone who looked start to worry.
Mungchi was not about to be outdone. His whole body shivering, his anxious gaze, the tongue lolling from his mouth—anyone would have taken one look and thought, that one is in terrible pain.
"Hmph. Mungchi's not bad, meow."
"Little Grey neither."
The pride fight between Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi had gone beyond fighting now; they were beginning to acknowledge each other. Watching them, Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi allowed themselves a thread of hope.
I-is it over?
Is it finally over?
They still did not understand the true nature of the two cats in front of them.
"But our Little Grey has only shown as much as the dirt under a claw, meow."
"Listen to you! Mungchi's just warming up."
They acknowledged each other—and sitting on top of that acknowledgment was the pride each of them carried as a leader. Once more, both cats' eyes flashed and caught the light.
"Little Grey, meow."
"Mungchi."
Just as the two cats resolved, at last, to raise the two dogs to the level of acting gods—
Bonk. Bonk.
Someone walked up and rapped each of them on the head.
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi, struck without warning, wrapped their front paws around the places they'd been hit and looked up at whoever had done it.
"Hyung-nim, meow! That hurts, meow!"
"Hyung-nim, that hurts."
"I hit you so it would hurt."
They had spoken up expecting him to worry over whether they were all right. Instead he had hit them so it would hurt. Both of them shot Lee Jun looks full of grievance.
"You ought to have been comforting the ones who are actually in pain..."
Lee Jun put on a deliberately stern expression and went on.
"That's your punishment for egging them on to hurt even more!"
Hup! The two sulky little mouths that had been stuck out in a pout snapped shut.
Lee Jun had caught on to what the two cats had been up to later than he would have expected. On any ordinary day he would have known that very afternoon, but the pair had covered their tracks so thoroughly that it had not been easy to notice. He had caught a strange atmosphere, of course. Ironically, though, Jageun Hoesaegi and Mungchi's acting had gotten so good that even Lee Jun had ended up falling for it.
There is no such thing as an eternal secret, however. In the end it was Sapsaree's report—unable to stand watching his two older brothers' misdeeds any longer—that brought Lee Jun down on the scene. After rapping both cats on the head, he took their statements on everything that had happened.
This is actually pretty interesting.
At first he had only meant to scold them. But as he listened, he found himself drawn in. The two cats had made a bet over who was hurting more—Jageun Hoesaegi or Mungchi—and put the dogs through all that acting, and the result was that every dog in the place now understood the danger of a bad fall.
It didn't even compare to me explaining it myself.
In a way Lee Jun had never imagined, Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi had driven into their friends' heads just how much a broken leg could hurt. Looking at the cats who had managed such a thing, he laughed on the inside.
I'll praise them tomorrow for explaining it so well to their friends.
They had explained it well, that much was true. If he praised them for it here and now, though, there was no telling what they would turn into a battle next time.
"Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi—no treats for either of you today!"
"Aooo! Aooo!"
"Nyeh-hweh!"
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi looked up at Lee Jun with their eyes narrowed into triangles. It wasn't a glare, though—not with the guilt they were carrying. Just a look steeped in grievance. Lee Jun took that look calmly and shook his head.
Thud. Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi hung their heads and walked off toward the corner of the ward. No treats. They were disappointed—but they couldn't stand the thought of being far from their beloved Hyung-nim, Lee Jun, so they had no desire to leave the room.
Lee Jun smiled as he watched the two of them recede, rumps swaying, putting distance between themselves and him. He had just realized how to solve something he had been turning over in his mind lately: how to keep the dangers of spring walks from happening in the first place.
Thanks to those two, I've thought of a good approach.
Lee Jun was thinking of running a hazard-prevention campaign starring Mongmong Animal Hospital's three mascots.